Εββ asked — bluntly — does Moleskine® makes my writing better. She didn’t emphasize whether it’s my grammar, narrative or writing style. Since that would be weird for someone with literature background to question the medium of written prose, be it papyrus or stone tablet. It’s the content that’s matter — and the expression.

It must be my hideous handwritting (unlike some people that I know of).

If the medium would be the case. Maybe I should write electronically. This is where Wacom Intuos3 A5 (PTZ630) and Wacom Bamboo Fun A5 (CTE-650K) come in. The latter for my sister who’s into deviantART deviations.

While the Intuos3 would be a perfect match for the new 17″ MacBook Pro (waiting for the shipment). Why Intuos3? Ergonomics.

Mouse Arm Syndrome (MAS) is a general term for the injuries that result from repetitive, forceful movements in body parts such as fingers, hands, arms and shoulders. Using a traditional computer mouse involves repetitive, prolonged clicking with the user’s hand and forearm twisted at an awkward, unnatural angle. This can lead to sore muscles and significantly increases the risk of RSI.

RSI stands for Repetitive Strain Injury. My right hand have this tingling sensation during the prolong use of mouse. I must been affected with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) since the advent of internet in my life. Bloglines really help me with better reading experience, using keyboard to browse the RSS entries. For graphic and video editing, I need something more natural to the nimble digits. Pen tablets is the answer.

Why Intuous3? It compliments my first DSLR: Canon EOS 5D Mark II. I need something to do the dodge and burn, tilf-shift and HDR effects, as easy as manipulating brush strokes.

Before this entry sounds like gadget commercial (Engadget or Gizmodo) from an artsy fartsy mensch. I better start to act apathetic and monotonous like some of you would expect from someone who work offshore for effing 3-6 months.

To be distinctly cultured have their risk. Better to be subtly philistine and mundane. In one of the inner subset instead the outlaying cluster of dark spot. In her case, I can celebrate the joy of celibacy now, since I got ample phallic gadgetry to masturbate with. Yeay! *orgasmic-sarcasm*

Meh. (That’s from me)

Have a go at Ken Follett’s The Pillar of the Earth. The story of the building of a magnificent cathederal, written by an atheist. Thank you, Mr. Taylor (Diving Operation Superintendent) for the book suggestion (after a rambling conversation about Nietzsche’s dead god and Camus’s dying god).

Meh. (That’s from her)

Why Intuous3? I know it’s silly to buy one (or two) just because of my fugly handwritting. Perhaps the smooth moleskine paper texture would help to improve my handwriting in a way, and the pen tablet for hand dexterity, as well as reducing the pain around my wrist.

He plays Mark David Chapman who murdered the 40-year old musician and activist, John Lennon, outside The Dakota, his New York apartment building. Chapman’s motives were fabricated from pure delusion, fueled by an obsession with the fictional character Holden Caulfield and his similar misadventures in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.

The film takes its title from the idea that through his actions in New York, Chapman was attempting to “write” his own additional, 27th chapter to Catcher in the Rye (which ends with chapter 26).

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan’s Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.

Social networking, social bookmarking and wikis. Where do people find the time?

So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in–that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought. I worked this out with Martin Wattenberg at IBM; it’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but it’s the right order of magnitude, about 100 million hours of thought.

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus. People asking, “Where do they find the time?” when they’re looking at things like Wikipedia don’t understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of this asset that’s finally being dragged into what Tim calls an architecture of participation.

Now, the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn’t know what to do with it at first–hence the gin, hence the sitcoms. Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, then it wouldn’t be a surplus, would it? It’s precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society.

And it’s only now, as we’re waking up from that collective bender, that we’re starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We’re seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody’s basement.

Then again, when they do get into the internet, knowledge is not really one of their objective. Take my colleague(s) for instance. The arc of the internet pathway is more to the tangent of social networking of friendster, myspace and facebook; than social networking of photography and art like Flickr and deviantART.

Social bookmarking like Slashdot, Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon is more likely to be a filler for surfing experience, rather than participating, and sharing.

Podcast is under utilized. Apple iTunes even got iTunes U for anyone on the road of lifelong learning. Apple iPod shouldn’t just be a music boom box through the ear canal. There’s one special section for podcast if you even care to look.

TED(Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a one stop centre for thinkers and doers to find inspiration. RSS feeds and downloadable video is at the ready, while transcripts of TEDTalks is on the way.

RSS Aggregator like Bloglinesfor example is the best way to minimize your reading time online and offline (or even maximize it, if you’re a RSS freaks like me).

YouTube. You know there’s a better channel to subscribe than a mere farce of internet toilet. There’s always 4chan by the /b/tards for the lulz.

The maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor. And similarly, the act is near reverential in its approach and the results are stunning graphical displays of the nature of the subject. The literary organism, rhythm textures and sentence drawings are truly gorgeous pieces.

A map of uniformed visualisation out of the chaotic humanity, as observed by Jack Kerouac.

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Literary Organism
A visualisation of Part One of On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.

Basic Structure
Each literary component can be divided into even smaller parts, the smallest in this diagram being words. The diagram is read clockwise, starting from the first chapter, paragraph, or sentence.

Part > Chapters > Paragraphs > Sentences > Words

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Rhythm Textures
Selected Quotes from On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.

Basic Structure
Variations in punctuation and pauses in the sentence create individual patterned diagrams for each sentence.

Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love; he didn’t care one way or the other, “so long’s I can get that lil ole gal with that lil sumpin down there tween her legs, boy,” and “so long’s we can eat, son, y’ear me? I’m hungry, I’m starving, let’s eat right now!”—and off we’d rush to eat, whereof, as saith Ecclesiastes, “It is your portion under the sun.”

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Sentence Drawings
The entirety of On The Road by Jack Kerouac.

Basic Structure
After each sentence, the line turns right, creating the drawing.

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Sentence Length
Every sentence in On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, organized by words per sentence.

Colour Coding

Eleven thematic categories with colour coding for each theme.

Dean Moriarty (Protagonist)

An insight into the character of Dean Moriarty, the protagonist. Background into Dean’s life, his friends’ perception about him, Sal Paradise’s (the narrator) observation about his behaviour, and description of how he acts of speaks.

Bop & Jazz Music

Description of the bop music nights the circle of friends often attend, explanation of the history of bop or jazz in America, and vivid sketches of the music itself as well as the musicians who create it.

Social Events & Interaction

Relate to times when Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty are meeting and spending time with friends in various social settings.

Travel

Experiences had by Sal Paradise, Dean Moriarty, and the rest of their circle of friends while travelling.

Sketches of Regional Life

Sal Paradise, the narrator, uses words to sketch a picture of the places he travels through, creating vivid images of the environment and the people who love in the locations in the mind of the reader.

Parties, Drinking & Drugs

Detail the parties Sal, Dean, and their friends go to as well as scenes which involve drinking or drug-taking.

Work & Survival

Describe the characters’ jobs of their experiences while searching for money to survive in their daily life or travels.

Sal Paradise (Narrator)

Sal Paradise is the narrator of On The Road, describing his travel across the United States and Mexico as well as reflecting upon his friendship with Dean Moriarty, the main character. Sections of the novel that either give background into Sal’s character or his thoughts and beliefs about the people and places he meets on his travels.

Women, Sex & Relationships

Any section of the novel that deal with sex, women, relationships with women, or a character’s personal philosophy about women.

Illegal Activities & Encounters with the Police

Designate the passage within the novel where Sal and his friends commit illegal acts such as stealing food or cars; also, it designates the group ‘s encounters with the police or other self-imposed forms of law enforcement.

Character & Sketches

The term “character sketches” refers to the sections in the novel when Sal Paradise gives background information about specific character in the book (except Dean Moriarty, who is referenced by his own colour). This background information aids the reader in learning more about the personality of the character described.

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Also, check out William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust (1948) and George Orwell’ Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) infographics.